


One Life

by abbichicken



Category: Blade Runner (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Found Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 09:46:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16910628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/pseuds/abbichicken
Summary: In which I do my best to find a way to fix-it fic the end of BR2049 with a sequel scene or two.





	One Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janie_tangerine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/gifts).



"Where is he? The blade runner? He's with you, isn't he?"

"Outside." Deckard answers, but he is staring at her, staring, and staring, and _awed_.

"He can come in," Ana says, looking kind, but not, perhaps, awed. 

Deckard wonders if she knows. He wants to say…something, but…what? "He...can't..." Deckard opts for, in the end, still not precisely focusing. "He’s…hurt.” His hand draws around the glass, as if tracing her shape. The words are murmured; he is exhausted in a way he hasn’t been in a long time.  
Ana smiles, a gentle, blank smile that could mean nothing at all. She simply repeats to Deckard, “He’s hurt?” as if she doesn’t quite believe it. 

Deckard shrugs. It isn't an easy shrug, it's a look of someone who's simply tired of it all, and out of answers, and concerned with something else entirely, in the moment, wants to have far different conversation from this. This, this strange, strange moment that he didn't imagine would come. "He's...on the stairs...outside." He bends over, coughing, palms on his knees,

Things catch up quickly; time starts to flood through him, but he rights himself as quickly as he can, looks back up, though, as if his eyes are unwilling to spend time looking anywhere other than at Ana, searching her face, her stance, her build, any of her, for any signs...of _her_ , of himself. Of the past.

Ana is already responding, though, flips open a panel behind her, presses an intercom of some sort. "David? I need you outside, quickly. We have an injured blade runner in need of assistance." She looks at Deckard, who conveys severity with the raise of his eyebrows. "Severely damaged," Ana amends. "Quickly: we need him. Recover and repair."

Deckard looks up, feelings, such as they are, thoughts, memories, tracing through him, his expression complex. "There isn't much..." He's coming over dazed by this point, the intensity of it all catching up.

Ana holds up a hand. "We have agreements here. The work we do...it's important. We have the best. If he's not due for retirement...and even then...we can help. I'm sure of it."

Deckard chooses not to dwell on these words. Whatever this is, whatever she does...that isn't what he's come for, not for that in itself. That said, if there's one thing he can get from today, if there's one benefit to the crux of the mess - a mess which runs so much deeper than he'd ever imagined, out there in the dust and the space and the quiet, maybe it is this.

 _Do you know me? Do you know…everything?_ He wants to ask so desperately, but after everything…Wallace, the vision of her, and he’s already forgetting the sensation of the fight, the fear of being drowned, of losing everything he’s waited all this time for, he wouldn’t risk it. 

The last few hours have given him so much to think about, and he's barely even begun to address it. Years back, he might have chosen to live beneath these contemplations, just as he did as a blade runner - crucial functionality, assignments, fulfilled. But with the passing of time, and the understanding they've had, seeing K living entirely inside the concept of _skinjob_ with a quiet acceptance so far from the vibrant fury of the replicants he chased down and...retired. It's a different life, a different time, a different purpose, carried out with entirely different eyes. Is this really a world he can continue to opt out of?

A figure, dressed in a white worksuit, dashes by him, and outside. Deckard straightens himself up, the concern for K rising within him once more – makes as if to follow, but Ana calls him back.  
"Don't - just let him take care of things. It's easier if you don't...get involved. You know…you shouldn’t have come here."

Deckard looks around the empty chamber, staggers back and rests against the wall for a moment. It yields, slightly, and he is unsteady enough as it is. Even the buildings in this world seem to conspire against him, so it seems. 

Snow bites cold at the nape of K's neck, and he wonders if he's ever lain in the snow before. There seems to be a memory of something, of a landscape, of the sensation of balling snow up between his palms, fingers sensing, but not reacting, to its crunching cold, but the memories, they could be anything at all. As the steps rise up to meet him, supporting the limpness of his tired shell of a being, he tries to find each flake of snow as it falls, trace it as far as he can, as his eyes begin to refuse to move, to refuse to close, everything an incoming pattern without translation.

 _This was enough_ , he says to himself, the words rolling into his brain syllable by syllable, as if typewritten in. This was enough.

He knows, though, that he is not telling the truth, that the words, wherever they come from, are not the ones he means. The energy and space between his cells is not responding as it should.

He hasn't touched his baseline in, what, days at the least, and for a moment, staring lucid upwards into infinitely increasing snow, he believes it must be the end as he searches for the beginnings of the phrases, tries to kickstart that sequence of words which generate his autoresponse that signifies that all is well, inside, at the least, the part that counts, the alignment of moving parts, the vital state of the part that must be calibrated if all else is to function.

The echo in the back of his mind of Lt. Joshi, " _fine without one_ ", fine without...without...could kick himself for not thinking of this, not running through his tests himself, not paying attention. What did he think would happen? Did he even...think?

It is the first time in a long time that he's been alone with himself like this.

Like this, it all seems so futile.

He traces back to that memory, to the childhood that wasn't his, to the intensity of feeling, the idea, the promise contained within it of a future, a reason, a feasbility for existence, something worth living for, something to hold on to, to grow and to change.

Another memory comes in too, though, of Joi, out there on the rooftop. Seeing her come to life before him, experiencing the rain - its greasy chill, and the way it made the cityscape glitter.

If he had control of his muscles, he would've smiled.

That one was his.

That one had even more future, even more possibility.

If he'd only had one life, that was the one he wanted.

At least he'd known what it could look like.

Just as anyone might, he edits the day job out, the functionality, the purpose, the darkness. The best of both worlds – the security in profession, the need for him, the company and the workforce. The calm of the baseline test, taking him back to a zero every night, allowing him to go home, to play a part, to sit within the persona he had chosen, the character he would play. The sanctity of their little home, together, unswerving, above the city, shut away from the noise, in their own space…together. 

The cold runs down his spine, and he feels nothing at all from the outside, not any more. 

There are sounds, somewhere, but they're muffled, watery and echoing. Then, the snow is obscured. His eyes are fuzzed and unclear. The cold is such that it is a part of him, now, but he asks it all the same, what's above him. His lips move, but there is no sound from him. From above, though?

A voice low over him, nothing he can see.

Kindly – and yet, unusual. Not an accent he knows. 

"My name is David. I work here. I'm here to help."

Then, pressure around his sides, hands under his jacket. They check at his abdomen, at the wound, methodical precision. A tightness, constriction, pressing around him – not unpleasant, and, if anything, only kind. 

Some words float into the dark and, as if programmed, K can feel himself repeating them, though by this point, he has no understanding of what he’s saying. 

Then, movement. 

His body is grasped by strong hands at shoulders and hips, can't feel his legs at all, and he finds himself on the move, in the air, supportive ground suddenly gone. He cannot react, cannot see anyone, and is left in his mind, searching only for the opening words of his baseline.  
_______

The door bangs behind the worker who ran out to assist K. Just Deckard and Ana, again, no more pressing concern than their eye contact, separated, sterile. Deckard feels the frustration of the clinicism of the room, of the entire environment. 

It is too much, and he longs for the dark tangibility of any other space. 

“Do you…know me?” he asks, body braced, hesitant, dreading the reply.

"You seem in a bad way yourself," Ana observes, gently, skirting the concern. "Do you need something?" She is determined to keep inside herself, for now. See how the blade runner is, see where the need is most. 

"I don't suppose _you_ have any cheese, do you?" Deckard says, wryly, with the best attempt at humour he can manage, last ditch spiking of the conversation, conscious of his state and how he must appear at this, the time he thought would never – could never – come. At the same time, it’s a genuine request. He is hungry, for what that’s worth.

 _I’ve done it all wrong. It’s all…wrong. Everything. She doesn’t know. But, I know. I can see. There she is…so much more than in Wallace’s spectre. There she is. It’s been so long._

"I've got a testing lab next door, with a bed, and running water." With a couple of gestures, Ana beckons the shattered Deckard to the goggles to demonstrate this. It looks blissful, if Deckard is honest. After so much time spent alone, or alone enough (except for the dog, he must go back and feed the dog), the…noise of it all…

Sometimes he wonders. Sometimes he feels as if things are slowing down. _As if the insides are running down, as if time itself is running out. The reactions are slower, the thoughts come more quietly. Is this what it was like? Roy, and Pris, and all the others, is this the ticking of the clock that they so clearly felt? The lights seem to dim, and inside, something beats a little louder, a little harder, a little faster._ Sometimes, he wonders.

You only have one life, as a Nexus anything. No second chances. No space. They live like that now, but for his…generation? The darkest surprise. 

Deckard thought about moving off-world, once. 

Try again. 

Something else. 

He didn’t even get an interview. 

“I will send you to it,” Ana says, mostly for himself, as Deckard’s eyes close, lost in thought. She lets herself, only now, take this in, look at him for who he is, what he is…what they are. He is. She knows herself better than he probably thinks, but the complexity of this life, such as it is, she isn’t sure she wants to share. It isn’t safe, for starters, and whilst her heart wishes so deeply that she could take away the barriers, and hold her father close and breathe in the same space, share everything she has imagined for so many years…he is also not safe here, not safe at all, and the best she can do is to take stock of what’s left of him, do what she can…and send him away. 

They shouldn’t have come…but she’s so glad they did. 

She knows. Of course she knows. She wants to say, but things are…complicated.

And maybe, just maybe, if she can convince him…or K, better K, if he’s in the shape to assist, maybe this could be a beginning after all, a transition, a chance. 

She knows them, of course she does, in the underground, can’t go out there herself, but David can, and does, runs the errands, keeps an eye out. An eye out, as it were, in the right places, but only ever looking official. He must answer to her though, because, well. He is one of hers. 

There’s only so much you can do, but if you do it well…she’s learnt a lot about how you can shape a person from the inside. 

Hasn’t had to confront it much, mind. It’s why she’s so worried for K, seeing him…see, that was cruel, that was sharp. But she’s had so little opportunity to exploit that sort of behaviour in person, it was hard not to. To see him, thinking he had all that, thinking it was him, when all along it was the _craft_ …but, she didn’t want for him to be hurt. 

If Wallace gets hold of them…

But she has some power. Provides so much. They should be safe…for a time. 

"I'll send someone in a little later on to let you know...how things are. But for now, rest."

Deckard's grunt is intended to indicate something along the lines of, the very notion, and also that rest and he are not necessarily necessary bedfellows, but the sensations of pain and overload are invasive, and his rapidly lapsing ability to concentrate, or focus, is such that he's more than content to follow direction. For now, at least.

It's all too much, in so many ways. All of them, the whole sorry lot of them.

____

When K comes to, there is a sense of the void.

No, of unbalance.

No...of lack.

Something is missing.

He opens his eyes, and everything is unusual.

Opens his...eye.

The right eye is missing.

David, cleaning instruments at the back of the operating theatre, returns to his patient, sensing the disruption.

A hand travels around his face, blurry, too close, and then passing to the side, unseen, where previously it might have been.

K closes his left eye, and sinks back into the darkness again.  
________

When he returns once more, he's in an apartment, close to his own. In...but something isn't quite right. Still. He encourages himself to the brief sense of home, to the touch of the chair beneath him, the lamp beside him. And then...they aren't quite there. Not quite.

Next to him is Deckard, hooked up to something or other, something running through him, a machine at the head, another at the foot. Nothing K recognises. Deckard is entirely still, and yet, despite the fact that he can barely see, that the perspective is the same, but everything a little to the left, he knows somewhere inside his mind just from looking at him that Deckard is as alive as can be.  
The room is warm, but comfortably so. Everything is a stark white, and there is no sound whatsoever.

“Hello?” he asks. His voice seems to be swallowed by the tone of the air.

There is nothing for a moment more, and then the sound of a door sliding open. 

“Good evening,” says the voice from before. K cranes his neck, tries to sit up, and finds himself there before he knows it. Blinking, confused, he stares at the tall, blond man in front of him.

“David,” the man reminds him, extending a cool hand. K accepts, awkwardly, clasps it, grips it tighter than he expected to. Shakes it. 

Even that motion sets an electricity flooding through him. 

“I feel…what have you…done?” His hand goes automatically to where his eye should be. There is no pain, no collection of data telling him something is wrong. It is just that: absence. And he recalls, then, Freysa, with her one eye, and her rebellion in the dark. And he remembers, then, what she asked him to do. 

It is some fight to prevent himself from looking over at Deckard, for, in this setup, who knows what can and can’t be read from his mind. 

“Can I fetch you anything?” David asks. “Perhaps you’d enjoy a malt whisky.”

K’s eye stares, unblinking for a moment. 

“I…yes. But…please. What have you done to me? Is it…what you’re doing to him?”

“Ah, yes. Well, the eye is obvious, yes? You won’t need that. It won’t help. Trackers in the nines, that’s the latest. You don’t want that.” The voice is syrupy, clear and overly kind. K finds it as unsettling as he does definitive. 

“What’s the…feeling, though? What about him? You didn’t take his eye.”

“He’s not a 9. Or an 8, come to that. Nothing to remove. The rest? Think of it as a bit of an upgrade. Should do you good, keep you both going for a bit. Now, let me fetch you that drink. I suggest you stretch out a little. Let everything…settle.”

K is tingling from scalp to toes. It is not unpleasant. He is warm, he is safe, it is quiet. Is it a reprieve? 

Where is Ana?

He hops up from the bed, and leans over Deckard. The man is neat, still, and, now he’s close, he can feel, _pulsing_ with a strange energy. 

“I wouldn’t touch him,” David snaps, back before enough time has passed. “Come through. Your drink is outside.”

David leads him into a library, walls lined thick with books, richly upholstered red velvet chairs that seem to be wooden, sat facing each other, a table nearer one than the other, which, it transpires, contains Ana. 

“Welcome,” Ana says, gesturing to the chair. “If you would?” 

The veil, such as it is, shudders momentarily enough to make it evident to K that Ana’s bubble is well in place, that everything is as much an illusion as before. When he takes the chair, it is hard, plastic, and in no way made of its appearance. But the ambience of it all hangs around him. 

Ana gives him a gentle smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Brand new,” K says, a touch of suspicion about him. “I like...this.”

“I knew you would,” she replies. “I decided so many things about you.”

“Not everything,” K insists, surprised by the rise in spite that comes in response to her words. 

“Not everything, indeed. But…you’re feeling strong?”

“Than ever. Why did you…help? And what are you doing with him?”

Ana nods, as if she means to get to something. “He can’t stay here, K. You know…we all know, yes?”

K doesn’t say anything. 

“I wish we had time, but we don’t. Let’s leave it at – he can’t be here, he can’t be anywhere. It’s good you came here, it’s one of the last places they’d look, but we’ll show you’ve been retired. It’s why your eye…we’ll store it, categorise it all. The records will be clean. Nobody will care, nobody will know. But Deckard – I know, you see, who he is.”

K maintains his silence. It is by far the most effective way of eliciting further information from a talkative party. 

“I know why I’m here. I read my records. I saw what they found. They didn’t even tell my parents. But, it all makes sense. I have spent a lot of time imagining a lot of things, and I have tested a great many of them, in the twenty years I’ve spent in this bubble. Since I’ve had David with me, it’s been easier. Officially he liaises between myself and Wallace, but, of course, it works on multiple levels. He’s a Nexus 9, like you. Does everything I need, without question. You can’t imagine the things I’ve discovered, and that is for the best. Please, though. Take it from me. You do not want Wallace to know you are alive. And you must, must do something for me.”

K asks, _What?_ with his eyebrows – feels the pull at the space, but makes the face all the same.  
“I need you to take a message to Freysa and the others. I’ll tell you where they are.”

“I…” 

“You know?” 

K silences himself again, frustrated to have, apparently, said so much with so little. 

“You’ve met Freysa? You have! I know that you have, now. Well, that does make things easier.”

“I don’t…think I can…I don’t want to do this any more.”

“None of us want any of the way things are, my friend, but only a very few of us have any choice in the matter. You are one of the ones with a choice. Can you think of anything more real, than to make the right choice?”

He curls inside at the way she speaks to him – she might be a born replicant, she might be _special_ , but it is so frustrating to hear her speak in this way, especially after what she did. The false hope, the wringing fury it brought to him. The way it let them both down. It wasn’t right. 

“I am real,” he says. It sounds so petulant. He is, indeed, feeling petulant. _It isn’t like that._ But the experience kicks in, compassion follows on. _How would she know?_

“Please.” Ana drops the library, it falls away as quick as a curtain over the stage. “Please, K. You could change things. You could change everything. It wouldn’t be much. Just a message. There’s more that you could do afterwards, but…you don’t know Wallace. You don’t know what he’s planning. This, all this, the brutality of it all, it’s not even the worst. You want to see the millions of you out there, off-world? I’ve seen things you don’t want to dream of, K, I have had to. He asks me to help. Programming. It’s what I do. I do it well. But the bodies are already piled so high.”

K shifts in his seat – his insides are _fizzing_ with an energy akin only to that during a fight; it all but frightens him. 

Ana rolls her shoulders back, flexes her arms. She is squinting at him, staring, looking for something in his face. 

“Why don’t you take a drink? David set the tray for you. I hope it’s to your liking.”

K sits up, and takes in account of the tray before him. A bottle, a glass, a dish – he lifts the lid – filled with ice, of all things. He salivates as he pours himself Scotch, a good half glass, and adds two cubes of ice into it, because they’re there. 

“Do you…” K asks, and gestures to the glass. Ana smiles, and shakes her head. He sips. It’s extremely good. 

Sips again. 

Once more. 

Time insists on continuing. 

Ana speaks on an offbeat of silence. 

"What were they like?"

"Huh?" K is demonstrably lost, confused by the question.

"I can see, you've loved someone, you're missing them. It isn't just the light in your eye that I know. And it’s more than our conversation when last we met. Tell me about them."

Ana comes close to the edge of her bubble, tips her head one side, and then the other.

"Tell me about them. Please."

K opens and closes his mouth twice, shifts in his chair to face her more directly, as if something might explain itself without his having to try. He doesn’t want to think about her, because, she does mean her, doesn’t she? The crest and fall of hope has been too much, too raw.

Ana runs her fingers through her hair, paces to the back of the room, then returns, and tries again. "I don't mind, you know, there's nothing to worry about either way, whatever they were, whatever they were to you. I suppose, we all are at our best when we have something to fight for. Do you know that feeling?"

“Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t get to know much about what happens…later. Afterwards. There isn’t usually an afterwards. Please.”

K nods, so slowly, tries to avoid the idea of “afterwards”. "Joi. A Joi. MY…Joi. We'd been together for a while, and I'd just bought the...just...if I hadn't bought it...it took her, you see, she could come outside with us...it’s a sort of…projector…but it makes her…"

_This isn’t the right explanation at all, does she even know what…_

Ana smiles, a wide and warm smile. K thinks she looks warmer than anyone he's ever seen. More, somehow. How? But she's speaking, and he wasn't listening.

"A Joi? You bought her an emanator? I worked on that. For Wallace. It's been in production for years. The thought behind it was that - well, you probably worked that out for yourself. But…it worked? And you loved her?"

K's eyes widen. "You made the emanator?"

Ana smiles. "Heavily involved. It’s one of the better things we…they…that there is. Couldn't possibly tell you exactly what we did. It's lots of things. They aren't always...there's a lot to it. To me. You see, if I were to share it all, that would never do. But...why don't you tell me about her? The standard model?"

K tries to tame the tension rising inside him, shifts a little awkwardly. He recites the model, specs and enhancements. Mostly companionable ones, a plugin with a dash of humour.

"I know the one," Ana replies, making small gestures with her hands as if she were writing things down, though K can see neither keyboard, nor pen. “Now…tell me something about her. Tell me about…how she made you feel.”

K finds himself doing just that, then, without meaning to. And it’s only now that he realises how much happened, how quickly it all flashed by. The days have been long and dark of late. That baseline, the defining space between his cells. But he is telling Ana everything, now, and the words flood from his mouth. 

He drinks again, and it really is good. 

He wishes Joi were here, as he talks about how they were going to have their life together. He doesn’t tell her about Mariette, but by the end of the conversation, he assumes she knows. 

And by the time he’s finished…he looks up, and there she is. 

There, next to Ana, right there. 

Just…there. Ana flexes her fingers, as if drawing in her palms, and she leans over to Joi, and whispers. 

Joi smiles. 

“Hey, Joe,” she says, and she steps right through the wall. Just like that. 

Just like _that_.

K flies towards her, and she to him, and they merge, and still, and are briefly as one, adjusting and rotating and all but glowing with an energy comprised of time and visual trickery, and K wraps his arms around his own chest, and they smile, together. "I didn't mean..." K says.

"Shhhhh, Joe," Joi replies, as quietly and kindly as anyone might. "I understand."

“You see what you could have?” Ana says. “If we could work together, then…this could be your life, now.”

He is so numb, now, the fizz from before molten into a leaden perfection that makes him feel more solid than ever he has before. If there's only one life, if it’s _this_ life, then he must have so much more of it. He takes deeper notice of the sense of being combined, and breathes into the space between them.

"Where do we go?" he says to Ana. "What’s the message?”  
Ana smiles. “Do you remember,” she says, “when the cherry blossom fell? Don’t tell me. Not now. Just, think about it, and tell me if you do.”

_There haven’t been trees in years. But there was one year when…it looked like ash. Coated the streets. Falling, falling, and they ran outside and it was…not flowers, but their skeletons. They crumbled in your fingers, disappeared in a moment. The children looked at each other, and ran through them, everything evaporating, the sidewalk clear within moments and back to its slick grey, the clouds passing silently, and then the rain beginning again._

Joi laughs, and says, “I can see him remembering.” She puts a hand by his face, traces where the eye was, nodding, as if she understands.

“I remember,” K confirms.

“Good. That’s the message.”

“What?”

“You’ll find others who remember. And when you talk to them, you’ll know.”

“That is clever,” Joi offers, with a small laugh. “Oh, let’s go. I can’t wait to see outside.”

“It’s still snowing!” Ana says, and Joi looks delighted. 

“And she –“ K starts. 

“As long as you’re together, everything will be fine. Just take this with you.”

Ana goes to the side of the bubble, slots something into a box, which slides and thuds down a chute into a cupboard with a handle on K’s side. “It’s the hardware.”

K collects it, and stares at it, and smiles, a real, vast, bright smile that runs right through him. 

“And what about him?”

“You mean –“ 

“In the room. Is he alive?”

“As much as we all are.”

“Can he…”

“Go with you? No. No, definitely not. But he won’t be staying long, either. Please, you’ll need to go now. Go on. I wish you well. I hope we’ll meet again. I think…maybe we will. If this goes well. I have a plan, after all. You’ve just made it run ahead of schedule.”

“Thank you,” Joi says, and K nods, too. It is not the turnaround he’d expected, but he’s leaving feeling more than he ever did before. He reaches out to Joi, making to leave, and she furls her hand inside his clenched fist. 

"I knew you'd come around," Ana says, and K doesn't miss how pointed this comment is. “One more thing – you can take the car you’ll find there. You’ll find it knows you – say ‘one life’ when you get there.”

K starts, at the phrase, stares at Ana again. It is…difficult, to be so known as this.

“We only get one life,” Ana calls out, as they start to walk to the door. “You know? Because they…made it that way. So, let’s make it good.”

“Let’s do that,” K murmurs, and he is glad to leave. Hopes Deckard is well, and all, but…this is a chance that can’t be missed.

It is enough, he thinks, as he follows the route they'll take, the people they'll work with, realises what they're doing, taking a side, enough to do this, for now. And after all, for all he’d wanted to keep out of it, wouldn’t kill Deckard for anything now, isn't it better to take the side for a reason, than because you were assigned to it? Isn’t it better to make a choice?

 

Maybe it isn't better, maybe there is no better in this dour, tired, grinding on-world. But maybe, still, it is enough. If there is only one life, then, no other chance awaits, no other choice to be made. If there is only one life with, as it turns out, the chance of love, of family (family? But who knows?), of hope and change and maybe, just maybe, the chance of doing something positive in this mess, well, the least he can do is to try to live in it. 

As they drive into the greydark world, slush foaming around the edges of the windows as they drive, Joi’s hand merges with his, and for a moment, K would swear that he feels warmth. 

______

Deckard rests more than he's accustomed to, the room certainly experimental, and his curiosity fails him when he opens a drawer and finds it full of vacuum-packed...matter. It's almost a relief when a blond man opens the door, and asks him if he's ready to speak with Ana again. It might've been an hour, it might've been a day and a night, he neither knows nor cares, but follows all the same.

Ana is sat on a plush chaise longue, so it seems, tea set out in front of her, a matching armchair and table set a short distance away, The man extends a hand, implication, _for you_ and Deckard sits. Ana doesn't even give him time to get comfortable.

"You know that you can't stay here, of course. Niander does not know many things, and he knows that you…do."

"He thinks I'm dead," Deckard says, with a hint of finality.

"Then your being here is the fastest way to establish that you are not. Regardless, there are better places for you to be. I know people who would welcome your expertise..."

Deckard quite literally backs away, through a projection of an oak tree, disrupting the scene. "I'm done with people. It's you I'm here for."

Ana drops the projection. "If it's me you're here for, then you must know that you can't stay. You must know this is only momentary. You know what I'd be, then? To him? Proof of what can happen? You cannot conceive of his monstrosity in the light of my existence. You do not know the things he asks for."

Deckard does not, and would greatly prefer to keep it that way. Being in that…temple, such as it was, was enough. "You know who I am? 

“Of course I do.”

“But why – “

“I’ve known since I was eight. You don’t know how hard it’s been.”

Deckard fights everything in him that wants to say “Don’t I?” and settles for “I just...wanted to meet you. You...look at you. Look at this."

Ana shrugs, mildly, as if to say, _that much, you’ve done_.

"What is it they say you have?" Deckard asks, a suspicious look on his face. "The condition."

"Would you know if I told you?"

"I don't trust them, any of them."

"No more than we all do. This is why...this is why I'm an expert, you see. They need me, and I have everything I want. It keeps people out, you know, as much as it keeps me in. My problems, that is."

She casts a little scene in the middle of the ground, white picket fence surrounding a perfect little block of flats. "The less you know," she says, rotating it, and building another, and another, until a maze of high rises appears, with the fence stretching around it each time, "the easier this will be."

"Easier what?"

"The goodbye."

Deckard goldfishes a little.

“Please. Not now. Not yet.”

“What happened to the blade runner?”

“K? He…” she stops, before even starting. Keeps her face blank. 

“You couldn’t save him?” Deckard asks, the concern clear. 

Ana remains blank. “He isn’t here any more. Nor should you be. Please….” (Deckard waits, hopes, but she doesn’t say it) “you need to leave.” 

Deckard nods. 

“Need to feed the dog, anyway.”

“You can’t…they can’t know you’re still here. It’s dark. It’s a good time to go. David will show you out. He can give you a lift.”

“No, no. No, I’ll make my own way. Disappear. I just…you take care. Okay?”

Ana nods. 

Deckard puts his hand on the clear wall once more. She doesn’t match him. 

He nods. 

“I’ll be thinking of you.”

“Don’t ever say anything, though.”

He shakes his head. 

Course not. 

Leaves. Leaving a part of himself behind. 

_Damn kids_ , he thinks, making his way out. 

Disappear? Not likely. They only have one life. He’s spent enough of it alone. He hasn’t forgiven Wallace for his party trick with Rachael, never mind the volume of suffering with his penchant for creating, and destroying. And then that done? Maybe he could see Ana again, and get back some more of his time. Might as well try. 

They’ll need him, whatever’s next. The only thing more useful than a blade runner, surely, is a dead blade runner. He’s not worried about finding K. Takes one to know one, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear recipient, Blade Runner is the film of my heart, and there were so many things I wanted to write for you, but most of all, I just wanted to get K back in a vaguely plausible way, and then once with I came up with this, I had to run with it. I wish it was a bit more joyous, but, here we are - I do wish you a very Merry Yuletide, and thank you for such a lovely prompt! <3


End file.
